Oceanview, San Francisco

An M Ocean View train on Broad Street

Oceanview, also referred to as "Lakeview" by some natives of the community, has a rich history.[5] Oceanview was originally an Italian-Irish-German neighborhood in the mid- to late nineteenth century; the location acted as a station for train service between San Francisco and San Jose, owned by San Francisco and San Jose Railroad, bought by Southern Pacific in 1868.[6]

Post World War II the Ocean View was one of the few places in San Francisco where African-American families could buy property. During redevelopment in the Western Addition/Fillmore neighborhood in the 1960s and 1970s by the San Francisco Redevelopment Agency, more African-American families moved to the neighborhood from the Western Addition and Bayview neighborhoods.[5] Until the mid-1990s, African Americans accounted for over 50 percent of the neighborhood's residents. In the early 2000s, lower real estate prices relative to the rest of the city brought in a new influx of Asians, Latinos, and Caucasians, making Oceanview one of the most culturally diverse neighborhoods in San Francisco.

At one point in time there was a lake on Geneva Ave, down the slope from the eastern side of Oceanview. Lake view refers not to Lake Merced, but the former Lake Geneva. The creek coursed through this canyon and by Glen Park and then through what is now Bosworth Street until it reached the bottom, over which Mission Street viaduct is built. The other source is about where Cayuga Avenue and Regent Street intersect. Its channel was what is now Cayuga Avenue and joined the other branch under the Mission Street viaduct. The creek widened between Niagara and Geneva Avenues to form what was known as Lake Geneva.[7]

Partly due to fairly recent waves of gentrification in the past decade, Oceanview is more ethnically and economically diverse than San Francisco as a whole. Asians now hold majority status in the once predominantly-African American enclave. Although no longer a majority in the neighborhood as in the 1960s-1990s, many blocks abutting the Broad-Randolph Street corridor remain 50% or more African-American in residency. As of the early 2010s, the block off of Orizaba Avenue and Garfield Street is 54% black, the highest concentration of Oceanview.[8] As of the 2010 Census, Oceanview is 44.68% Asian, 22.99% African American, 20.36% Caucasian and 14.1% Latino.[9][10]

Oceanview has been described as "hard to find" due to its location situated in between two freeways in the far southwestern outskirts of San Francisco. Passenger service on the train line that established the area ended in 1904, causing business development to decline in Oceanview. Post World War II, African-Americans were encouraged to buy property in the declining district, finding less discrimination and lower cost older average age homes throughout the area. The neighborhood began to show signs of neglect and deterioration by the 1960s. By the early 1970s Oceanview had become an African American-majority neighborhood, representing over 50% of the residents. The balance of the neighborhood residency consisted of African Americans, Asians, Latinos, and Pacific Islanders, with fewer Caucasians residing in the district.[11]

By the 1980s after years of widespread civic neglect, the Oceanview neighborhood declined into one of San Francisco's most crime-ridden districts. A geographically remote, socially isolated, majority-black population of displaced blue collar workers endured an environment rife with unemployment and relative poverty. These socioeconomic factors transformed the working-class neighborhood, resulting in drug trade and gang activity. Notably, the primary neighborhood corridors Broad and Randolph Streets, became a dangerously active open-air drug market. These streets were marked by high concentration of liquor stores and shuttered former businesses. Crack cocaine and heroin drug abuse became prevalent in the area throughout the 1980s and 1990s, as nearly 20 crack houses were counted in the neighborhood by police authorities at one point in the early 1990s. During the period, Oceanview and adjoining Ingleside Heights experienced some of San Francisco and the Bay Areas highest violent crime rates. Gunfire was frequently reported in the area, with a sizeable percentage of San Francisco's homicides occurring in Oceanview. One year, 12 homicides occurred on a single Oceanview intersection. Despite the neighborhood's high crime rates, local news media paid little attention to Oceanview compared to other lower-income dangerous high crime neighborhoods in San Francisco such as Bayview Hunters Point.[12]

Historically, the bulk of the murders that occurred in Oceanview were killings connected to the once thriving local drug trade in the community. Murders were also the outcome of armed combat between mostly young African-American men involved in local loosely organized gangs of childhood friends from opposing rival "turfs", or majority-black low-income neighborhoods and or public housing projects, throughout San Francisco including Randolph Street in Oceanview as well as the Sunnydale projects on the fringe of the Visitacion Valley neighborhood and the Western Addition, locally known as the Fillmore district.[13][14][15] These locally based gangs of mostly young male minorities involved in the criminal lifestyle of San Francisco often did not refer to themselves as actual gangs as there was no hierarchy, strict organization, recruiting or getting "jumped in" associated with groups whose main camaraderie was based on claiming their neighborhood, block or public housing projects.[16] Young African-American men involved in local turf gangs or "mobs" in Oceanview, as well as most predominantly African-American areas of San Francisco and much of Bay Area seldom adopted the Blood and Crip nationwide gang culture that was founded in 1970s Los Angeles.[17]

Concurrently, in the late 1980s and 1990s, Oceanview became a hub for independently produced local underground Gangsta Rap, known in the Bay Area as Mob music. During this time, young men from the local area began articulating the harsher realities of growing up in the neighborhood through Rap music. Thus detailing the violent street crime that plagued the district as well as voicing their unsettling daily struggles while living in Oceanview. Many Bay Area Rap pioneers such as the late Cougnut and Cellski hailed from the neighborhood, some from the public housing project at Randolph and Head Streets along the areas main corridor.

By the early 2000s, serious incidents of violent crime had decreased significantly in Oceanview. The efforts of a neighborhood group of community activists called Neighbors In Action and the local police force had effectively curbed the street crime associated with drug dealing and gang activity that had blighted the area for decades. Most notably, long-time Oceanview resident Minnie Ward helped spearhead the changes in Oceanview by working hard in community activism with her husband to reverse Oceanview's then increasing ghettoization in the early 1990s.[18]

Both Minnie,(d: 2005) and husband Lovie (d: 2003) were honored when the Oceanview Park recreation center was rebuilt and renamed the Minnie and Lovie Ward Recreational Center. The renaming commemorated the couple's contributions to cleaning up the Oceanview neighborhood. A new library opened on 345 Randolph Street in June 2000, replacing an older and markedly smaller reading room type library that was located at 111 Broad Street. At 117 Broad, Engine Co. No.33, an architecturally restored 1890s Victorian firehouse offers riding tours on an antique fire engine throughout San Francisco.

Few new businesses have opened along the residential neighborhoods once downtrodden Broad-Randolph commercial strip. In 2019 high-end Asian grocery chain HMART opened its only store in San Francisco and later in 2022 expanded the Oceanview to be the largest in the bay area due to a large number of Asian American population in the area.[19]

Despite its past, Ocean View is currently as of 2022, one of the safest neighborhoods in San Francisco with 71% less crime than San Francisco [20]

From 2013 to 2022, many homebuyers are choosing to purchase homes in Oceanview. This is due to housing stock selling at a much lower price point than most San Francisco neighborhoods. Housing prices continue to rise annually in Oceanview. From 2012 to 2013, the median sales price of houses in Oceanview increased 6.3% and the number of sales increased by 66.7%. The average square foot price of a house in Oceanview was $484 which was a 12.8% increase from the same time frame.[5][21] The increase however slowed down after Fed started raising interest rates in 2022.[5][22]